Nigerian Soldiers Fire On Own Commander After Being Ordered Into Boko Haram Ambush As Government Rules Out Swapping Prisoners For Captive Schoolgirls -- Daily Mail
Nigerian soldiers fired on their own commander yesterday after they were ordered into a Boko Haram ambush that killed a dozen of their comrades.
The soldiers had been conducting operations around Chibok, the town where Islamist militants snatched nearly 300 schoolgirls last month, when they came under attack.
Soldiers said the troops fired at a senior officer who came to pay respects to the killed soldiers, whose bodies were brought to a barracks in Maiduguri, the capital of north-eastern Borno state.
Observers called the shooting another sign of demoralisation in the military that is in charge of the search for the abducted schoolgirls.
It came as Britain's top official for Africa said Wednesday that Nigeria's government is ruling out an exchange of detained Islamic militants for the kidnapped schoolgirls.
President Goodluck Jonathan has 'made it very clear that there will be no negotiation with Boko Haram that involves a swap of abducted schoolgirls for prisoners,' said Foreign Office Minister Mark Simmonds.
But Nigeria's government will talk to the militants on reconciliation, Mr Simmonds said, after a meeting with President Jonathan in Abuja, the Nigerian capital.
'The point that also was made very clear to me is that the president was keen to continue and facilitate ongoing dialogue to find a structure and architecture of delivering lasting solution to the conflict and the cause of conflict in northern Nigeria,' said Mr Simmonds.
The failure to find the girls after the April 15 mass abduction has triggered national and international outrage and forced Nigeria's government to accept international help.
Nigeria's Ministry of Defence played down yesterday's shooting incident, saying soldiers 'registered their anger about the incident by firing into the air.
'The situation has since been brought under control, as there is calm in the cantonment' in Maiduguri, which is about 80 miles north of Chibok.
But soldiers at the scene at Mailamari Barracks said infuriated soldiers fired directly at the vehicle carrying Major General Ahmadu Mohammed, commander of the army's 7 Division. He was not hit.
The witnesses said the soldiers were angry because they wanted to spend the night in a village and told their command the road was dangerous after the attack around Chibok.
They were ordered to travel instead and were ambushed, with at least 12 killed. The soldiers spoke on condition of anonymity because they want to keep their jobs.
The Ministry of Defence, which often exaggerates the number of enemy killed and downplays its own losses, said four soldiers were killed along with several insurgents.
Troops engaged the insurgents in a fierce combat and extricated themselves from the ambush killing several insurgents. Four soldiers however lost their lives during the ambush,' said a statement from the ministry spokesman, Major General Chris Olukolade.
Soldiers have told the Associated Press that they are generally outgunned and outnumbered by the insurgents, don't have bullet-proof vests, are not properly paid and have to forage for food.
Anger at the military's failure to keep peace in Borno and other regions where Boko Haram operates have led local people to form their own vigilante groups to fight the extremists.
A British-born alleged ringleader of the Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram is in custody after he was arrested in Sudan, it was has been claimed.
Aminu Sadiq Ogwuche is suspected of being the co-mastermind of a two bomb attacks in the past month in a suburb of Abuja, the Nigerian capital, which more killed than 90 people.
Five Boko Haram militants had been arrested as suspects in the car bombings in Nyanya on April 14 and May 1, security officials said.
Information they provided pointed to Ogwuche and another man, Rufai Abubakar Tsiga, as masterminds.
Ogwuche served in the intelligence unit of the Nigerian army but deserted in 2006, said a spokesman for Nigeria's Ministry of Information.
He was arrested at Abuja airport in 2011 on arrival from Britain on suspected terrorism-related activities but was released to the care of his father, a retired army colonel, following protests from rights group, officials said.
The arrest came as Nigeria's government said it is willing to talk with Boko Haram militants a month after the Islamist group seized 300 schoolgirls in a kidnapping which has outraged the world.
Nigeria's minister of special duties, Tanimu Turaki, yesterday told Reuters 'the window of negotiation is still open.'
He was speaking a day after Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau posted a video offering to release the girls in exchange for prisoners held by the government.
However, senior officials say the government is exploring options and has made no commitment to negotiations for the release of the girls, and Mr Turaki declined to comment on possible talks over the kidnapping itself.
Instead, he referred to an amnesty committee that he heads, set up by President Goodluck Jonathan last year to talk to the Boko Haram militants behind a five-year-old insurgency.
The committee's initial six-month mandate expired without holding direct talks with the rebels, though it has spoken to them through proxies.
It has since been replaced by a standing committee empowered to conduct talks, officials said. In other developments yesterday in the Boko Haram crisis:
- Reports emerged that scores of Islamist militants have been killed in an attack launched by vigilante groups in Borno state
- Britain announced it was to send a spy plane and a military team to Nigeria to help its forces track down the captive schoolgirls
- The governor of a northern Nigerian state angrily denounced plans to extend a state of emergency which has been 'marked more by failure than success'.
- The governor of Borno state, where the girls where kidnapped, says 77 of the captives have been identified.
Tensions continued to mount in north-east Nigeria, where the Boko Haram operates, with villagers there claiming to have killed scores of militants they suspected of planning a fresh attack.
On Tuesday morning, vigilantes in Kalabalge, a village in Borno, the state where the girls were kidnapped, launched an ambush on two trucks filled with gunmen, a security official told The Associated Press.
Scores of militants were killed and at least 10 have been taken prisoner, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorised to give interviews to journalists.
Residents said they were taking matters into their own hands because the military is not doing enough to stem Boko Haram attacks. It was not immediately clear where the detainees were being held.
Kalabalge trader Ajid Musa said that after residents organized the vigilante group, 'it is impossible' for militants to successfully stage attacks there.
'That is why most attacks by the Boko Haram on our village continued (to) fail because they cannot come in here and start shooting and killing people,' he said.
Earlier this year in other parts of Borno, some extremists launched attacks in retaliation for the actions of vigilante groups.
It is not yet clear how this the killings will affect any potential talks for the return of the captive schoolgirls.
Boko Haram has killed thousands of people since 2009 and destabilised parts of northeast Nigeria, an oil-rich country with Africa's largest population and biggest economy.
The abductions have triggered a worldwide social media campaign under the Twitter hashtag #BringBackOurGirls, and prompted the U.S., Britain, France and Israel to offer help or send experts to Nigeria.
The U.S. has already sent military, law-enforcement and development specialists.
Two U.S. officials said on Tuesday a mix of manned and unmanned American surveillance aircraft were being used to aid the search for the missing girls.
One U.S. official identified the drone as a Global Hawk, which is a high-altitude, unmanned spy plane manufactured by Northrop Grumman.
President Jonathan returned to Abuja yesterday from the Congo Republic, where he held talks with President Denis Sassou ahead of a regional summit in Paris on Saturday.
He asked parliament on Tuesday for a six-month extension of a state of emergency in the northeastern states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe due to persistent attacks by Boko Haram. The emergency was declared last May and extended in November.
But Yobe state Governor Ibrahim Gaidam rejected the proposal on the grounds that local people had suffered under the emergency and this harmed the government's counter-insurgency strategy.
He said in a statement that his government 'takes very strong exception' to attempts to extend the state of emergency - a period that he described as 'marked more by failure than by success.'
After being accused of a sluggish response to the kidnapping, Nigeria's central government has sent thousands of troops to the country's restive north.
Military sources say the search for the missing girls is being concentrated on the Sambisa forest area of Borno state.
Borno Governor Kashim Shettima said 77 of the girls in the video had been identified by parents, fellow students and girls who escaped the abductions.
'The video got parents apprehensive again after watching it, but the various steps taken by the governments and the coming of the foreign troops is boosting our spirit,' said Dumoma Mpura, a leader at the girls' boarding school.
Boko Haram has killed more than 1,500 people this year. Although security forces have forced the militants out of cities, they have struggled for months to dislodge them from hideouts in mountain caves and the Sambisa forest.
